Location, Location, Location!

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be talking about how I function as a GPS for my clients businesses. Today I’m going to talk about LOCATION.

When you first turn on your GPS, you can see it finding your current location, right? It may take a second to connect to satellites, but you eventually see what street you’re on, in what town (hopefully!), and if you’re good, what direction you’re facing.

In business, this means ensuring the books are accurate. For some small businesses, they understand the need (unwillingly, but they get it) that they need to have a set of books for their business. My dad was one of these. He viewed bookkeeping as something to be caught up for tax time, but otherwise, it was a pointless waste of time to do anything but maintain his receivables.

Some businesses don’t feel they need to keep any accounting records until they go to apply for a loan, take on investors, or produce an accurate tax return. They usually have no idea where their receipts are, and have never looked at their bank statements, let alone reconciled them. They look at their bank account balance on any given day, and that is the basis for making business decisions. Some businesses can make money while operating this way, but more often than not, it catches up to them and they panic.

I hate to use multiple metaphors in the same post, but as a realtor will tell you, the three most important words are? Location, location, location! The same goes in business. If you don’t know where you’re starting, it’s pretty hard to get to where you want to go. I’m in the fortunate position to be able to help my clients with their bookkeeping. By assisting them with the bookkeeping, I’m able to 1) keep them on track with their bookkeeping so it never becomes a daunting task. But more importantly, 2) I can tell them exactly where they currently are with their business. As I’ll talk about in future weeks, this involves more than just numbers on a financial report, or columns and rows on a spreadsheet. It’s a conversation, with everyday language and words, so my clients really “get” it.

You may be in a great location, and you need to stay there. But if you’re in a bad location, you’ll need to figure out how to get to a better location.